BIPARTISAN EFFORTS NOT ENTIRELY DEAD: Three Republicans and a Democrat get together on a bill to give the federal government’s housekeeping agency flexibility to negotiate seriously for space leases with options-to-buy at bargain prices. It’s a boring issue, to be sure, but saving billions of tax dollars would be nice.

DEMS WORRY ABOUT RECESS SLOWING IMPEACHMENT DRIVE: The data is accumulating rapidly that Democrats’ impeachment hearings seriously backfired among independents. Some Democratic campaign advisers see it, others not so much. Now the recess is here and don’t be surprised if the downward slope in the data continues.

‘AMERICA’S MAYOR’ RESPONDS TO BIDEN, BOLTON: Rudy Giuliani responds to, well, pretty much everything that’s been said about him lately, including the former Vice President and the claim he expected to profit on a Ukrainian energy firm. Things got a little testy between Giuliani and Fox News’ Ed Henry, something that seems to be happening a little more frequently between Fox anchors and Trumpers.

TWO ALIENS WALK INTO A BAR IN AMSTERDAM: Okay, it’s an argument about intelligent design and Rembrandt. And it includes J. Warner Wallace, NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective offering eight reasons one of the aliens is right. Come on, go ahead and click it! When’s the last time you read about two aliens arguing in a bar in Amsterdam???

WILL THE HOROWITZ FISA REPORT SHAKE THINGS UP? Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker seems to think it will. Sundance at The Last Refuge is not so sure.

IMPEACHMENT CHARADE EXPOSES CAREER BUREAUCRATS AS DEVOUT LEFTIES: Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell writes today on The Federalist that “what we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that ‘experts’ in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.”

That shouldn’t have to be pointed out because, as Mitchell notes, “none of the precincts in and around Washington, D.C. are red. When the votes are cast, 100 percent of the precincts populated by large numbers of federal workers are blue. Every review of political contributions by federal employees reveals that federal employees give virtually no campaign contributions to Republican candidates.”

This is why the Reaganaut maxim “Personnel is Policy” points to what may well be Trump’s biggest tactical mistake — failing to install as many Trump loyalists as possible as political appointees in the highest reaches of the federal bureaucracy. At the very least, such appointees can recognize and disarm many of the bureaucratic IEDs set by careerists.

Careerists scream and yell endlessly that such appointees mean “politicalization” and “a return to the spoils system.” The reality is political appointees are a crucial tool for implementing the programs and policies voters endorse when they elect a president. The money saved by not having the maximum number of political appointees is utterly inconsequential compared to the costs of being constantly subverted by the entrenched bureaucracy.

OF SYCOPHANTS AND CHILDREN: One of the many reasons to love Issues & Insights is its no-nonsense refusal to go with the flow of mainstream media adulation of Greta Thunberg and similar teen scolds telling the rest of us how evil we are for not heeding AOC’s prophesy of ecological doom in 12 years. Here’s a sample from today’s offerings:

“The world can’t help but know about Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish scold who seems to have dropped out of school to travel the world and impudently lecture her elders about how they have let her down. Though this girl knows nothing about climate other than it exists around her, and less about the world, adults nod in agreement as she rants, hand her multiple honors and awards, and have sworn they have been inspired as well as properly chastised by her.”

HUNTER BIDEN’S FIRM GOT $130M IN FEDERAL BAILOUT LOANS: It was purely coincidental that Daddy just happened to be Vice President.

DID YOU SEE THE FOUR THUGS TRY TO BURN DOWN THE EPOCH TIMES’ PRESS? Freedom of their press only? The Washington Post and the New York Times have yet to report it, but four thugs busted into The Epoch Times’ printing facility in Hong Kong earlier this week and tried to burn the place to the ground. They failed, but the intended message from the totalitarians in Beijing was clear enough.

The Epoch Times vows to continue publishing the truth about Hong Kong, China and everything else. Yes, I’m biased, but not because I string for The Epoch Times covering Congress. I’m biased because I love the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free and independent press, which the Post and NYT once proudly illustrated. And could again if they were more like The Epoch Times.

HERE’S THE SOROS LINK TO THE IMPEACHMENT: Rudy Giuliani tells Glenn Beck all about it.  

BURISMA FOUNDER ACCUSED OF STEALING UKRAINIAN STATE FUNDS: Reuters report is sure to spark reappraisal of the impeachment effort by Adam Schiff. Not.

CHINA PAYS TOP DOLLAR TO US-BASED SCIENTISTS FOR THEIR WORK: U.S. taxpayers are unwittingly funding a significant part of the R&D costs for the Peoples’ Liberation Army in China. They do it through an innocuous sounding program, the Thousand Talents Program that pays (bribes?) scientists and other experts, including both foreign nationals working here in the states and U.S. citizens to transfer their work to China.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s permanent investigations subcommittee, is hearing from the FBI and other federal agencies at a hearing this morning. They will be grilled about why China has been able to do this right under their noses, essentially without interference until last year, despite the fact TTP violates multiples U.S. laws, regulations and policies.

MAYBE LOUISIANA GUV WAS MORE PRO-LIFE WIN, LESS TRUMP LOSS: Rod Dreher, who knows a thing or seven about Louisiana politics, offers a number of observations about why Gov. John Bel Edwards won re-election, including the fact his GOP opponent had no platform. That’s right, no platform.

IS IT TIME FOR ‘RESTITUTION-BASED IMMIGRATION REFORM’? Bruce Ashford is Provost of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his proposal comes out of a resolution approved by the Southern Baptist Convention. Step one is no amnesty.

CAN YOU SOLVE THIS ‘CHICKEN-AND-EGG DILEMMA’ ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE? NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace claims there is no solution: Which came first, the machine that makes the protein required for life or the protein required to make the machine that makes the protein that’s required for life?

REP. ELISE STEFANIK, HERE’S THE LEFT’S REWARD FOR YOUR COURAGE: Geez, why does it appear that being a smart, courageous, tough young woman only counts if you are part of the Resistance, not one of those mean, bigoted, unsophisticated bumpkin Republicans who are shredding it?

SURPRISE! MARRIAGE WORKS BETTER THAN SHACKING UP: New survey of 9,000 couples turns up, among much else, the interesting conclusion that “married adults are more satisfied with their relationship and more trusting of their partners than those who are cohabiting.” Who knew?

UKRAINE 2014 IS BEING REPEATED HERE IN 2019: Mickey Kaus’s observations about the parallels between Ukraine 2014 and the U.S. 2019 ought to open some eyes. Remember John McCain speaking in the square and Victoria Nuland passing out cookies to the protesters who ultimately overthrew a corrupt, but democratically elected government?

Look close enough and you just might see McCain’s face transform into that of Adam Schiff and Nuland’s into Marie Yovanovitch. As Kaus observes: “It’s not the job of the State Department to observe every jot and tittle of another country’s election laws. It’s the job of the State Department to pursue U.S. interests. If that also involves meddling in another country’s politics to a degree that would send Robert Mueller into permanent state of shock if Russia did it to us — well, welcome to the world.”

Worth thinking about.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE THIS WEEKEND, MAKE IT THIS: Glenn highlighted it earlier today and for good reason. Attorney General William Barr’s Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society is a deeply thoughtful assessment of how unbalanced our three “equal and separate” branches of the federal government have become since the 1960s.

Consider this graph on the growing intrusions of the courts into the everyday decisions of living:

“In recent years, we have lost sight of the fact that many critical decisions in life are not amenable to the model of judicial decision-making. They cannot be reduced to tidy evidentiary standards and specific quantums of proof in an adversarial process. They require what we used to call prudential judgment. They are decisions that frequently have to be made promptly, on incomplete and uncertain information and necessarily involve weighing a wide range of competing risks and making predictions about the future. Such decisions frequently call into play the “precautionary principle.” This is the principle that when a decision maker is accountable for discharging a certain obligation – such as protecting the public’s safety – it is better, when assessing imperfect information, to be wrong and safe, than wrong and sorry.”

Barr may be President Donald Trump’s best appointment. If you doubt that, just keep scrolling through his lecture.

KANYE WEST GOES TO JAIL: No, not like that! He made a surprise visit to the county jail in Houston, Texas, Friday and brought his choir with him to give the inmates and officers a worship experience they will remember for a long time.

IMPEACHMENT COUNSELS ARE POLAR OPPOSITES: It’s like Daniel Goldman for the Democrats and Stephen Castor for the Republicans are from two different planets. Or perhaps two different galaxies. Wonder what they talk about if they happen to step onto the same elevator?

THEY NEVER LEARNED ABOUT LENIN, CAPITALISTS AND THE ROPE: Officials with the federal Thrift Savings Board said no to the request from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) that they not invest upwards of $50 billion saved by members of the U.S. military and civil service in Chinese firms supplying the People’s Liberation Army. The senators are not happy.

SOMETHING ODD ABOUT THAT WHISTLEBLOWER: Charlie Martin wonders how you get fired for leaking in the White House but still be able to return to your former agency, the CIA? Very good question, that!

THREE KEY QUESTIONS DEMOCRATS WILL NEVER ANSWER ON IMPEACHMENT: In his opening statement today, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top GOPer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), laid down a three-cornered challenge to impeachment-crazed Democrats.

EVEN THE DEMS’ WITNESSES SAID TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT UKRAINE CORRUPTION: That 18-page, single-spaced memorandum circulated late Monday by the GOP staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) provides a devastating look at how many of the witnesses who have testified behind closed-doors supported Trump’s view on Ukraine.

Given how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has acted the part of the petty tyrant, including rejecting Republican witnesses and instructing those who have already testified not to answer specific questions put to them by GOPers, don’t be surprised if next El Jefe takes away GOP staff office space, orders their computers permanently unplugged or some other similarly spiteful action.